


Waking Dream

by margrave



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Future Fic, Gen, Post-Canon, Resurrection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-10
Updated: 2018-10-10
Packaged: 2019-07-28 22:02:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16250666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/margrave/pseuds/margrave
Summary: He wakes up in pain, gasping for air, clawing his way out of the darkness. He wakes up in a lab, surrounded by the broken remnants of decay and the death of his sanity. He knows this place.





	Waking Dream

**Author's Note:**

> I had this lying around, and having done 10k of Consort!au fic I wanted something different and easy.
> 
> I always felt Sephiroth got the short end of the stick in the FF7 franchise, the dude was used by everyone and never really had a chance. 
> 
> Not beta'd. All mistakes mine.  
> .  
> .

He wakes up in pain, gasping for air, clawing his way out of the darkness. He wakes up in a lab, surrounded by the broken remnants of decay and the death of his sanity. He knows this place.

....

The first week all he can do is sleep for long periods of time. In between he carefully and slowly searches through the labs and the basement avoiding the library, keeping away from creatures that can probably kill him with one hit. The mansion is cold, damp and dark, navigating through it carefully and slowly. He finds some clothes that fits him well enough in the basement lockers; t-shirts, jeans, and thick winter jackets. There is a stock of tinned beans and spam in the pantry, supplies that have no expiry dates, and packets of MRES. He eats and sleeps in a corner of the lab amongst a nest of clothing and blankets he managed to forage. He does not think.

During the second week he takes proper catalogue of his body. He has never been weak for so long; fatigue dragging his every move, fine tremors plague him when he exerts himself, which seem to be walking for more than a few minutes. In a small bathroom mirror he realises that both his hair and eyes are now brown, it would explain his lack of night vision. He has lost about a quarter of his muscle mass, and he is sure he has lost about an inch of height. There doesn't appear to be any hint of Mako in his blood stream. 

It isn't until a month into his new life that he feels stable and healthy enough to try and see what he retains of what he was. He slowly goes through basic katas and confirms that he is baseline human, a weak one at that. It will take months before he can be a dangerous one. In between he conducts a proper search of his surroundings, finally able to walk and even jog a bit without his muscles screaming in pain and his chest feeling like it was going to explode. He finds ammo and several guns in the basement, a two slot armband equipped with a basic cure and fire Materia in the labs, and an all Materia in the library shelves. He begins training, trying to regain fitness; cardio and strength building, and he is so damn thankful for the cure Materia.

At the beginning of the third month he decides to engage in live combat, he has gone through most of the supplies and while he is building strength, he is losing weight he can't afford to, he needs protein. He has also found the boundaries of his body but he needs to be stronger. He targets two Black Bats, and it is embarrassing that at the end of the fight he is almost at his limit. Sweating profusely and breathing hard, the cure Materia has been essential in its defeat. But he kills it and loots the corpse; some vampire fang and dubious meat. He keeps the fangs, and boils the meat till it started to fall apart to make sure any disease was properly killed. As the month progresses he engages in more fights with Black Bats and moves on to the Ying and the Yang. There is little in the way of loot but he collects quite a bit of gill and Vampire fangs. He gets stronger, he manages to increase the levels of his Materia and expand his search parameter; he finds some better armour.

It isn’t until the fifth month, when he feels competent, closer to what he was before the nightmares begin. There are the expected; Angelus dying, Zack crumbling in front of him, Aeris falling forward as Masamune had skewered her, and Cloud, always Cloud, the young incompetent soldier, the mindless puppet, the hero that could stand toe to toe against Sephiroth. He wakes from them cold and numb. It is the dreams of a smiling Zack, it is the dreams of Angelus and Rhapsodos waiting for him, it is the dreams of a shy and brave Cloud before the end of his world. It is those dreams that he wake from tears running down his face and completely drained.

He stays in the basement of the mansion for half a year. He becomes stronger, gather supplies and finally get the backup generator to work. Power means an actual reason to find a working computer and network access to the outside world. So he finally takes proper stock of the labs and finally enters the library. He feels nothing, as if whatever this place had over him was gone, burned out completely by the insanity and his most recent rebirth. He isn’t sure what to feel so he ends up sitting dumbly in the seat for several hours till he pulled himself together. 

The computer took a bit of effort, but it slowly booted, an ancient relic that he is truly surprised still works. It has been three years since the remnants of the attempted reunion, flashes of children, Cloud and the lifestream tinged by Jenova. He doesn't know what to do. All his enemies are dead or not so much enemies anymore, and for the first time in over a decade he can't hear any other voices but his own in the privacy of his own mind. He hasn't been this calm and clear headed in over a decade, even before Midgar, he had been losing himself, losing his connections. It has only been in the past month that he started to think about why is he back. He doesn't have any Jenova cells, a simple blood test in the labs confirmed what his now human body already knows. He had expected the Cetra to have sent an emissary to take him out by now. But the life stream is suspiciously silent.

He doesn't even look like himself anymore; his eyes brown no hint of Mako, and his signature hair now a none-remarkable brown, braided into one long plait. He is pale, having spent the past half a year underground, though he has a sneaky suspicion his new body will be the sort that burns red rather than evenly tan.  
For the first time in his life he is free. He is not even a soldier anymore, Mako no longer part of his bloodstream, no great destiny, no voices in his head. The world a vast invitation waiting for him. 

Sephiroth leaves the mansion armed with two guns, some armour and dressed in winter gear. It is odd to actually have to protect himself from the cold.

...FIN...


End file.
